Does your Company have a Blogging Policy?

• Posted by Geoffrey G. Gussis on February 2nd, 2005


• Filed in Employment Law, Guides, Tips and Practice Pointers, Risk Management & Compliance

With the explosion of blogging, many companies have employees that maintain personal blogs or contribute to company blogs.  Companies should develop blogging policies to address issues that may arise from employee blogging (e.g., confidentiality, intellectual property, information dissemination about markets, competitors, etc.).  These issues are similar to those raised by employee websites, but the benefits of blog technology make these issues more pressing.  Blogs are simple to set up and can be posted to by a click of the mouse.  There is no need to format HTML code, upload files or learn to use complicated software.  Indeed, blogging is easier to use than most desktop applications.  For these reasons, blogging is more accessible than any other Internet publishing technology developed to date.

So what should be included in a blogging policy? Lenn Pryor (Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft) presented Microsoft’s "semi-informal blogging policy" at a recent conference, and his thoughts can be found at BuzzMarketingWithBlogs, Susannah Gardner’s companion blog for an upcoming book on blogging for businesses. 

One thing is for sure, employee blogging can lead to employee terminations - as one contract employee at Microsoft found out recently.  Thus, it’s best to get a policy in place to set the ground rules before issues arise.  Look forward to more on this topic from the InhouseBlog.